This is late in coming, but we couldn’t help but take notice of these 80’s street- skateboarding pioneers. Street skating has been around since the invention of the skateboard, but it wasn’t until the late 80’s that street-skating started to get the same kind of traction that vertical skateboarding was already getting in California.

Thanks to the initial exposure of these skateboarders below (on widely distributed VHS tapes of these films in the 1980’s), street skating was (and has since become) a respected art-form that’s still alive and very well today, and is arguably more popular then ever.

We compiled some videos below that tell these skater-pioneers stories better than we can.

Below – Here’s Tommy Guerrero skating in Future Primitive, the seminal Powell & Peralta movie that was released in 1985, that single-handedly introduced the world to a real skateboarding pioneer, and the original Bones Brigade:

Here’s the Bones Brigade from the same film, ripping it up in the NYC streets, in a much different New York City then the one that exists today:

Here’s a great clip of Mark Gonzales skating in Video Days, which was put out by Blind in 1991. Gonzales (aka “The Gonz”) is widely credited as one of the first skaters to skate down hand-rails, in addition having an incredible ability to rip it up on Vertical ramps as well:

Here’s a clip of Natas Kaupas showing off his skills in Streets of Fire (by Santa Cruz).
See what he does at 1:07 upon his encounter with a fire-hydrant, this ollie alone should have won awards. Not to mention, how many other skaters could ollie over garbage cans like this guy?

Here’s a clip of Rodney Mullen on That’s Incredible proving why he was the world’s best Freestyle Skateboarder in the history of the sport, and a lot of his maneuvers would find their way to street skaters nationwide over time…

See him here in action many years later with a Louis Armstrong soundtrack, ripping it up on the streets:

Here’s Per Welinder (yep, another clip fromFuture Primitive), who can probably be best described as the Silver Medalist in Freestyle skating one step away from Mullen:

Lastly, here’s a contest video clip from 1986, with a lot of the pioneers in action at
The same Sacremento, CA skateboarding contest:

Links for your perusal:

More on Tommy Guerrero,
More on Mark Gonzales (aka The Gonz)
More on Natas Kaupas
More on Rodney Mullen the Freestyle King
More on Per Welinder

More Links: Tommy Guerrero,
Natas on Facebook,
Mark Gonzale’s skateboard company Krooked
Lastly, the man who helped make it all possible: Alan Gelfand, the inventor of the Ollie.

Even more good Skateboarding links:
Skateboarding History,
Skate History w/Rodney Mullen
Even more good history here as well…